No comments about Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture.

5 comments about Places of the Soul: Architecture and Environmental Design As a Healing Art.

1. Are you looking for a book that recognizes the need for designing buildings to meet lofty sustainability goals, but that also places human needs on an equal or superior plane? Do you look at new mechanistic buildings of steel, titanium and low-e glass and wonder how it's possible to feel inspired, or even comfortable, when you're in them? If you answer yes to these questions, then perhaps you would benefit from reading the second edition of Christopher Day's book, Places of the Soul, Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art (Grammarians might suggest "as Healing Arts").

   Day wrote the book in 1988, long before the birth of LEEDS, to address his perception of a growing lack of concern about human needs for variety in the form of spaces, the connection of spaces to nature and natural processes, and craft in the production of habitation. From his concerns one would assume that he was a student of the work of Christopher Alexander, particularly "A Timeless Way of Building". However, he moves beyond Alexander in citing the results of empirical studies that support his theses.

   In the chapter Architecture: Does It Matter? Day discusses how good design adds value, increases productivity, reduces health care costs, and accelerates healing. He cites the work of Dr. Roger Ulrich that demonstrated faster healing of patients in ICU's with views of nature. Important to architects struggling with limited budgets is the cited research that demonstrates how a 6.5% increase in productivity can justify a building four times as expensive!

   This book takes a broad-brush look at regionalism, vernacular architecture, the art of architecture, human and planetary health, quality versus quantity, making spaces livable, and even design as a listening process. Responding to criticism from clients that listening is a problem with some architects, the National Architectural Accrediting Board has made a recent change in its student performance criteria that emphasizes listening as a required skill.

   From listening, Day moves to making buildings with soul, building as a health-giving process, silence and peace in architecture, and the creation of appropriate spaces for children. He concludes with an important chapter on the urban environment, the conflict between sustainable values and urban pressures, the needs of urban life, cities as places for people and for life, and whether eco-cities might be utopian or practicable.

   Places of the Soul is an excellent primer for students of architecture seeking a balance between design for sustainability and for human needs, between a mass-produced machine aesthetic and one that includes hand-craftsmanship, and between sterile mind-numbing sameness and invigorating variety. It is illustrated with photographs and drawings of buildings and places in Great Britain that, while relevant, could be supplemented with more recent global examples. This book raises challenging questions about the buildings and places we will design and build, and the affect they will have on us as people and as a society.




2. My God, I was forced to read this book for a construction management class at a four-year university in the United States and struggled through every minute. I don't know what was more frustrating, having to read this dull-minded and repetative junk or reading four words at a time because for whatever reason the prestigious author, Christopher Day, was forced to go against conventional thinking and put two columns on each page. This was hands down the worst book I have ever read throughout my life. The guy is hypocritical of everyone who lives in an ordinary house and works in an ordinary job in an ordinary office building. Sorry Mr. Day, but most of us don't have the time and monetary security to write a 200-page book regarding soulful places. We just trudge off to work everyday in our non-biologically inducing office buildings. A bunch of junk!



3. A bit wordy and repetitive, but some of his ideas are first rate. The pictures are really nice too.



4. This is a seminal piece of work, that I would recomend for anyone involved with homes and living spaces, (I think that means everyone!) There is much wisdom in this book, and it is as much a book about how we live as it is a life philosopy book.
   Best book I have read about our 'third Skin'



5. PLACES OF THE SOUL is a very satisfying, powerful look at how the architectural environment makes an impact health, thought, and especially spirit. Mr. Day's writing is beautiful, drawing the reader through ideas of space, light, structure, environment, location and intention. Reading it was both inspiring and informative. An elegant book about an important subject.

No comments about Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries.

4 comments about The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion.

1. The main thrust of The Unreal America is that commercial interests are choking out our experience of genuine regional and cultural diversity--in architecture, travel and even our knowledge of history. The first three quarters of the book is devoted to the theme parks, shopping centers and architectural restorations that Huxtable abhors, including Disney World, Celebration, Florida, Las Vegas and colonial Williamsburg. The last quarter of the book is disjointed from the beginning because she abruptly switches gears and lauds buildings that she finds exhilarating and which properly integrate materials, use and environmental context.

   The book is must reading for anyone who has a passion for architecture and is concerned about how commericalism and real estate development affects our society. Although the tone of Huxtable's writing is haughty, angry and sometimes repetitive, her message is an important one. Huxtable rails against The Disney Company and its penchant for creating fake, idealized versions of real places. Walt Disney's dream was to create clean, controlled environments where happiness abounds, but in the years since his death in 1966, the dreams and fantasies of children of all ages have become mass-merchanidised and channeled into a narrow focus of personalities and products. Huxtable maintains that Disney has become a mass dispenser of schlock-from amusements to art to architecture.

   Huxtable also decries the way that shopping center malls and superstores such as Home Depot and Walmart have choked out diversity in retailing. "In the reality of suburban America," she writes, " there is no place else to go", because malls and movie megaplexes have replaced downtowns and streets. Huxtable acknowledges that architecture is largely influenced by investment economics. She is a realist that does not expect that strip malls and shopping centers should go away, but she denounces the banality of their designs and how our collective experience of that stifling sameness makes society more homogenized.




2. This book was awesome from the beginning to the end. The way she wrote was breath taking. I like cheese and pasta. Cheese is good on asparagus. I like the cheese on this book.



3. Though her thoughts on what she thinks are "good" modern architects are very illuminating and insightful, her rants against Disneyfied structures and environments are tiresome, pithy and repetitious. She seems like she's trying to sound like a hip, streetwise rock critic or something. Forget the first 50% of the book (or skim), and save your time and energy for the last 50%.



4. The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, by Ada Louise Huxtable, is a book that is inviting to a non-academic audience. Huxtable makes case studies of structures that she has experienced and groups them into two categories- 1) What she finds reprehensible, the theme architecture discussed in the beginning chapters- 2) What she finds enlightening and exhilarating, the extension and modification of modernist ideas in contemporary works. Because of this categorization, the book is a bit disjunctive as Huxtable switches gears from complaining to lauding. Her approach to all structures is personal. She tends to incorporate her own reactions into her criticism and back up her feelings with formal description and by citing philosophers of culture such as Baudrillard and Eco. It is refreshing that Huxtable does not invoke a Marxist critique to indicate all that is wrong with corporate theme architecture and all that is right with public projects. On the other hand, her subjective disdain or praise is convincing only insofar as one acknowledges these opinions as expert. The first part of her book comes off as a social critique of theme parks, malls, and consuming venues that take their forms from the past. The second is more descriptive of how architects control materials and space to successfully fit a use/purpose while also creating new structural forms. This book deals with complex issues of simulacra and new history, but Huxtable keeps the language simple and approachable to the non-academic reader. Unfortunately, those already familiar with Baudrillard, Eco, Barthes, et al will find these arguments long dated. This book is a quality introduction to contemporary architecture for the uninitiated. The cognoscenti, however, will find the book unremarkable. A more comprehensive book that is excellent complementary reading to The Unreal America, is Architecture After Modernism, by Diane Ghirardo, which achieves more objectivity and depth.---William V. Ganis (WillemG@aol.com

No comments about Chicago Architecture and Design 1923-1993: Reconfiguration of an American Metropolis (Chicago Architecture).

1 comments about China's New Dawn: An Architectural Transformation.

1. It was here quick and in great condition.
   
   Very reasonably priced.

No comments about Nightlands: Nordic Building.

No comments about Wittgenstein's House: Language, Space, and Architecture.

No comments about Insight and On Site: The Architecture of Diamond and Schmitt.

No comments about Contemporary South African Architecture in a Landscape of Transition.